Essence Over Form: The Age of Liquid Search | Giorgio Taverniti
Welcome back to The Search Session. I’m Gianluca Fiorelli, and in this episode, I had the real pleasure of talking with my longtime friend and one of Italy’s most respected SEO experts, Giorgio Taverniti.
This conversation is packed with fascinating insights—especially Giorgio’s forward-thinking take on liquid search, a concept he introduced, and centered around Google’s ability to reshape and re-render content dynamically within its ecosystem.
He also dives into the idea of inspirational intent, which Giorgio sees as one of the most powerful and overlooked forces in today’s internet landscape, and discusses how understanding the essence of content—beyond just its format—is becoming essential in the AI era.
Giorgio further explains the rise of resolutive intent and why publishers and brands need to rethink their content strategies. He emphasizes the value of creators, meaningful product detail pages (PDPs), and a presence across platforms like YouTube and Google Discover.
Rather than completely restructuring the approach, Giorgio urges SEOs to study and test, combining structured data with deep content to stay relevant.
This conversation was full of insight, inspiration, and genuine warmth. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Video Chapters
Understanding How Google Reformats Content: Form vs. Essence
Expanding Beyond Google and the Role of “Resolutive” and “Inspirational” Intent
Satisfying Beneficial Purpose as the Foundation of Page Quality
Is Search the Main Use of LLMs? Giorgio Explores AI vs. Traditional Search
The Foundational Importance of Continous Learning (and Teaching) in SEO
Transcript
Gianluca Fiorelli: Hi, and welcome back to The Search Session. Today’s episode is really special for me because the person we're going to talk to—and that you'll get to see—is someone I’ve known for many, many years.
Meet Our Guest: Giorgio Taverniti
He’s Italian, like me, and I want to highlight something: usually, the most renowned SEO experts come from countries like the United States or the UK, simply because English is their native language. But there are so many incredible SEO experts around the world who’ve been working in the field for decades.
The guest I'm introducing today is one of them. I met him almost 20 years ago, by chance, and even back then, he was already creating videos on YouTube—I don’t even remember if YouTube was owned by Google at that point!
He’s truly one of the greatest evangelists of SEO best practices. He’s a forward-thinking mind, and honestly, many of the things I share with you today are the result of conversations I’ve had with him over the years.
He also founded the most successful SEO forum in Italy, which, over time, evolved into a major educational initiative with events like Search Marketing Connect—probably the oldest SEO conference still active in the world.
This person is Giorgio Taverniti. I’m really happy to have you here, Giorgio. How are you doing?
Giorgio Taverniti: Thank you, Gianluca, for your words—and for having me. It’s truly an honor to be here. I’m doing well. It’s a bit warm here in Bologna, but all good overall.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Perfect! It’s really hot here in Valencia, too. So, let’s start with the question I ask all my guests: how has SEO been treating you over the past months?
Giorgio Taverniti: Incredible, honestly. We’ve been very lucky. Only a few of our clients have seen a slight decline due to AI Overviews. I’ve been reading a lot of English-language discussions about it—the typical story of impressions going up while clicks go down. But we’ve only had one client in that situation, so I consider us very fortunate. Of course, we’re keeping an eye on things as changes continue to roll out in the coming months, but for now, we’re in a good place.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Oh yes, definitely sounds like you’re lucky! This situation—the major decoupling between impressions and clicks—was first described by Darwin Santos and then made popular by Barry Schwartz, and it seems to particularly affect informational websites, while transactional ones aren’t experiencing it in the same way.
What Is Liquid Search?
Gianluca Fiorelli: And talking about all these changes, maybe it’s a good moment to tie this into a concept I’ve mentioned quite a few times throughout The Search Session series—liquid search. You’re actually the person who coined that term. Would you like to explain it to our audience?
Giorgio Taverniti: Sure, and thank you for the question. What we’re seeing right now is actually a natural consequence of the final chapter in my book, Google Liquido – The Liquid Internet. The changes we’re witnessing are unfolding just as I described there.
To briefly explain the concept, let’s use e-commerce as an example. If you had a product and wanted to optimize it for Google 10 or 15 years ago, you’d target each vertical search engine: product pages for web search, images for image search, and data feed for Google Shopping.
But the liquid concept I wrote about challenges that approach. Instead of optimizing for each vertical separately, you focus on the core information—the entity, the structured product data—and provide that source content in a way that Google can understand and then deliver it in the shape it chooses.
So, the old SEO still wants to optimize everything for each specific vertical in the Google search engine. But what you really need to do is focus on the source of your data, the source of your page—and optimize that from the beginning. Once Google has collected and stored the information, it can then reshape it however it wants.
Take articles, for example. Ten years ago, an article might only have appeared in standard Google Search. Now, that same article can also show up in Google Discover. The content hasn’t changed, but the format—the way Google presents it to users—has.
That’s why it’s essential to optimize at the source level, not just for specific outputs or platforms. This is the heart of the concept I explore in my book—it’s what I call liquid search.
Understanding How Google Reformats Content: Form vs. Essence
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, exactly. And I think with this latest step in Google's evolution—AI-powered search—this idea becomes even more relevant. When we talk about our content as source data for Google to shape as it wants, we also need to think about how that content is formatted, more than just how it's written. It needs to be structured in a way that makes it easy to reuse by AI Overviews or AI Mode, especially in terms of clearly defined chunks.
Giorgio Taverniti: Right. And if you take that idea a step further, what we’re seeing now with AI is that it doesn’t just reshape the content—it distills it down to its essence. This is a bit difficult to express in English. In Italian, we have the distinction between “forma” (form) and “sostanza” (substance). In English, I guess it would be “shape” or “form,” and maybe “essence”.
So it’s no longer just about displaying your image or product page—it’s about extracting the core meaning of your content, combining it with other information, and generating something entirely new. Today, Google is liquid in every sense—every single part of its system operates in this fluid, transformative way.
That’s really an evolution and for me, this represents a real shift in mindset. We can’t just talk about queries anymore; we have to think in terms of search sessions. And when we talk about Google, it’s not just about the shape of content, but also its essence. With AI Overviews and AI Mode, what we’re reading is something completely new—something generated by Google from all the content created across the web. That, to me, is a fundamental change.
Expanding Beyond Google and the Role of “Resolutive” and “Inspirational” Intent
Gianluca Fiorelli: And extending your concept of liquid, we’re not just talking about liquid search within Google anymore—we’re also moving toward what we might call omnichannel liquid search.
This idea has been surfacing for a while. I remember a couple of summers ago, the former Head of Search at Google pointed out that younger generations were starting to use platforms like Instagram—and especially TikTok—for certain types of searches.
It’s something we really have to consider today, especially now that the number of environments where people can perform a search is expanding rapidly. It’s a bit like going back 25 or 30 years when there were several search engines all competing with a relatively even share of the market.
Giorgio Taverniti: Yes, and to create this new mindset, I often say that we need to stop thinking only in terms of Google's intent—what we know from the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, like informational, commercial, and so on—and start thinking in terms of internet intent. It's a completely different perspective.
Google is no longer the only search engine. There are so many other platforms and environments where people search for information. When users interact with AI systems—like Gemini, ChatGPT, or even Google's AI Overviews—they’re not always searching for informational or commercial content. Those intents still exist, but they now represent just a small portion of what users are asking for.
More and more often, the dominant intent is something I call resolutive intent. People have a problem, and they want a solution. That’s what they’re really searching for. So the content we create today—whether it’s for AI systems or for the broader internet—should be what I call resolutive content. To me, this represents a fundamental shift in our thinking.
For example, let’s say you want to buy a sofa. Not just any sofa—you want a three-seater, with fully removable covers, maybe with headrests. You may also need it to be at least 15 centimeters off the ground so that your robot vacuum can fit underneath.
Think about how you used to search on Google. It was difficult—you’d type in four or five words, click through to a website, maybe apply a few filters, and hope to find the information you needed.
But how do you search now? It’s much simpler. You can just ask an AI or perform a deep search and get results tailored precisely to what you're looking for.
This has big implications for e-commerce. If you want your product detail page (PDP) to appear in those AI-generated answers, it needs to be rich in structured data. The content must include the specific information the user is looking for. This works very well for resolutive intent.
However, there are many websites on the Internet, and you can still create content for informational or commercial intent—especially for Google. But it’s also time to start thinking about resolutive content specifically designed for AI systems.
And don’t forget about other intents—because SEOs tend to focus heavily on Google and the classical intent types. To me, the most powerful intent on the internet right now—on Google, Bing, or ChatGPT—is the inspirational intent.
When you’re looking for inspiration, you go to platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, or Google Discover. And this intent is completely different. You can’t optimize for it the same way you would for informational intent.
When you're optimizing for inspirational intent, you don't rely on classic keywords like “sofa three-seater.” Instead, you aim to surprise, you use persuasive language. Just open TikTok or Google Discover and pay attention to the titles. Or if you open a video, pay attention to the very first second. That moment tells you a lot. It makes you realize that you need to rethink how you create content.
Let’s go back to the sofa example. You open a video and it starts with something like: “I just found something I couldn’t even imagine—an incredible sofa!”.
If you want to offer real value in the future, you need to start considering other internet intents. For me, resolutive and inspirational intents are very important.
Satisfying Beneficial Purpose as the Foundation of Page Quality
Gianluca Fiorelli: Absolutely. And what you're saying reminds me of a recurring theme in many Google patents: the concept of beneficial purpose. Sure, you can target these new intents—like resolutive or inspirational—with your content. But once users land on your page or platform, you also need to justify that intent. You have to prove that you're the right source for that need.
This is something many SEOs tend to overlook when they talk about classic user signals as indicators of page quality.
Giorgio Taverniti: And if you read many of Google's patents, there’s one I always remember—it’s called Watch Time-Based Ranking on Search. It’s incredible. It basically applies the same logic used on YouTube.
When we talk about inspirational intent, Google wants to know if your content is strong enough to keep users on the platform. If you study YouTube’s algorithm, you’ll see it’s designed to detect which videos keep users engaged and on the platform longer.
Well, Google has a patent to do something very similar in the SERP. This is incredible. The patent is very important. Google describes this very well and it’s something like this: if we go to your page, we want to know if you have a video on it. We want to know how much time people spend watching that video, how much time they spend reading the content, and how long they listen to any embedded audio on your page.
So for me, it’s really important to understand that Google is no longer just a search engine—it’s a massive ecosystem. The idea of inspirational intent isn’t limited to social media platforms; it’s also present within the search engine itself.
The AI Search Race: Who Will Win for Giorgio?
Gianluca Fiorelli: Right. And speaking of new environments, we now have tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Anthropic, Perplexity, and others. There's also that Chinese one—I can’t remember the name right now...
Giorgio Taverniti: Yes, DeepSeek!
Gianluca Fiorelli: We’ve even got Groq. And of course, there's Gemini, which is now fully embedded into Google Search. So, what’s your take on all these emerging platforms? And why do you think Google might still end up winning the race?
Giorgio Taverniti: So, right now, I believe Google is working with Gemini 2.5, and in many areas, it’s already a leader. I’m curious to see what happens this summer—especially since I know OpenAI is planning to launch ChatGPT-5, which could be a significant step forward.
But here’s the thing: Google has an ecosystem. I’ve spoken with a lot of people in big tech, and one person working at Meta told me, “Yes, Meta’s AI is impressive, and so is OpenAI’s—but the ecosystem Google has is just too much.”
If you think about it—Gmail, Workspace, YouTube—Google has everything. It’s all interconnected. People are really sticky in the Google environment if that makes sense.
If you're in the Google ecosystem—using Workspace, storing all your documents, managing Gmail, watching YouTube—and then Google launches AI features integrated across all of that, you can do almost anything within that system.
I use Gemini in Google Sheets, and I use it in Google Slides—and honestly, it’s very good. I think people can’t change that. We can also see how people might shift the way they use the search engine, especially with AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Sundar Pichai mentioned that in India, AI Overviews already account for around 10% of queries. And I believe that because it’s pretty clear: once people start using Google with AI, they begin making more queries. They realize, “Oh, Google’s getting better now.”
This shift comes after people try ChatGPT, Perplexity, or similar tools. They go back to Google and think, “Something’s wrong, Google isn’t answering me anymore.” So they turn to GPT instead. But here’s what we have to remember: Google still has over a billion users who interact with it every month.
If the AI race started now, Google would certainly win—because it has that massive user base. Many of these people are experiencing AI for the very first time through Google, not through ChatGPT.
And we sometimes forget about the broader internet ecosystem. Roughly 50% of the world’s population still doesn’t use the internet. We hear a lot about ChatGPT’s user numbers, but we don’t really know how many new people are discovering AI for the first time through Google.
I believe that for many people out there, their first real experience with AI is through Google—and that’s why I see Google as one of the key leaders in the future of AI.
Is Search the Main Use of LLMs? Giorgio Explores AI vs. Traditional Search
Gianluca Fiorelli: Just yesterday—or a couple of days ago, depending on when you're watching this episode—I came across a study shared by Wil Reynolds. It compared how people were using ChatGPT in 2024 versus 2025. Back in 2024, many people were using ChatGPT not just for search, but more for things like acting as a therapist, making jokes, stupid searches, coding a lot, lots of different, and many other similar things.
Search, in that context, was more of a secondary or even tertiary use. But this year, in 2025, the type of use we might consider "search"—like the example you mentioned earlier about looking for a sofa—has actually dropped in the rankings of how people use ChatGPT.
So, I think it can be good or bad AI overviewing some of the answers. But what's really changing, especially for the younger generation, isn't where to do a search—it's how to do a search.
Giorgio Taverniti: How to do a search—yeah, that's the point. And I want to add something.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes.
Giorgio Taverniti: The truth is, we really don’t know how people—especially the younger generation and future generations—are going to use search with AI. That’s the problem. Wil Reynolds created an incredible study—I love it when he does those. I read a lot of his work, his studies, and his articles. But honestly, we just don’t know what’s coming. That’s the issue. It’s not the same as before.
Search engines are very simple to use. If you think about how users have evolved in using Google over the past 15 years… well, we haven’t changed that much. Initially, we used one- or two-word queries. Then maybe three or four. Sure, Google added new features—we could search for restaurants “near me,” for example. But overall, the culture around using search engines is still very basic. Most people are unfamiliar with how to effectively use Google. They don’t know about things like search operators, for instance.
But AI changes everything. The more you use it, the more your skill set grows. That’s totally different from how we use traditional search engines. What we’re seeing now is something we’ve never seen before—and that, to me, is the real point.
So yes, I want to stay updated on studies and trends, but my focus is always on people. On the human aspect of how people are using AI. Because I think the way people will use AI three or four years from now could be completely different from what we expect—or from how we’re using it today.
That’s why I’m not surprised to see people using ChatGPT like a therapist, or having conversations where it pretends to be a friend. We live in a world where many people are alone. Just look at the growth of solo YouTube channels—streamers playing games by themselves, and connecting with people all over the world. When I see that, I think, “Okay… people are lonely.”
They don’t have friends to play with, so they become friends with those who open YouTube channels and start playing games online. To me, this aspect is pretty clear—especially in Italy. So no, I’m not at all surprised by the research Wil Reynolds shared. And I’m really curious to see what he discovers in 2026.
What “Query Fan-Out” Means for SEOs
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes. Okay, so let’s try to move into a more practical area. We agree that search behavior is changing—how people search is evolving, particularly with the integration of AI into the search experience.
Let’s take Google as an example, though it could just as easily be Bing with Copilot. AI now treats content differently than before. You've already started to touch on this, but let’s dig a bit deeper.
Now, searches are becoming more like long conversations, and we’re seeing that Google treats and reconsiders these through the concept of query fan-out. It’s being applied more deeply in the AI Mode and somewhat in a light mode in AI Overviews.
I suspect it, especially because there are already Chrome extensions that show the same thing that happens in ChatGPT: a conversational query gets reformulated into 25 shorter, more digestible queries to build a corpus of sources that will be used to generate the answer.
Therefore, we can no longer target a single keyword with a single page.
How should SEOs and business owners rethink things like site architecture, content creation, or even the use of different formats, given this fundamental shift? There’s now a substantial difficulty in even identifying the queries behind—or implied by—a conversational query.
Giorgio Taverniti: Oh yeah, that’s a really good question. I think it’s fine if you want to run some tests—but if you're thinking about changing your entire strategy right now, I’d say stop. First, test and study. Because AI has completely transformed how people search. This isn’t just a new feature—it’s a whole new world.
So to me, the most important thing right now is to study how people are searching for information. And you can do that in two ways: through external data and internal data.
For external data, Google Search Console is the only truly reliable platform. No other tool can be fully trusted for this. It gives you all the data, so we can’t trust other tools now.
But internal data—that’s even more important to me. If your website has a lot of traffic, you need to install your own ChatGPT or Gemini. Treat them like internal search engines. There’s no better place to study how people search than on your own website. That’s your real user base.
If you’ve implemented ChatGPT or Gemini, analyze that behavior. Study those interactions. And then you can start thinking about strategy.
Of course, you still need to understand the query fan-out system and try to create content accordingly. But once you start studying how people are using AI to search, you’ll get ideas. I have an idea of what you have to do. For me, the key to everything right now—the thing I’m currently testing—is relevance.
Just like before—relevance is really the key. But you have to ask yourself: why is it the key? Well, because AI search engines can understand user queries much better than before. There’s no doubt about that. And now, users are able to create very long, complex queries.
I tested this myself, and to me, it’s really important. You need to create comprehensive content.
Let’s go back to the sofa example. Imagine you're building a product detail page (PDP). Normally, a PDP for a sofa includes some images, a description, pricing, and maybe some structured data.
But if you create truly comprehensive content—like adding a video, an interactive 3D product view, a detailed FAQ, a long-form description, technical specs, and even answers to the common questions your customer care team receives about that sofa—then you're not just publishing content. You're building a resource of that PDP.
That kind of resource allows you to address inspirational intents because you can create videos, and even informational intents, commercial intents, and resolutive intents.
So yes, the first thing you have to do is to study how people are using AI to search. And if you really want useful data about that behavior, you need to build your own internal AI system—your own ChatGPT or Gemini.
But equally important: you need to create a lot of content. Comprehensive content. Because only with enough content can you generate meaningful data. If you don’t create content, you miss the opportunity to learn how people are actually searching.
Lessons from Amazon and Platform-First Thinking
Gianluca Fiorelli: What you just described is essentially an Amazon product description page.
Giorgio Taverniti: Exactly—and just look at Amazon. It’s so easy for them to apply AI. Why? Because they already have a massive amount of data. Their product detail pages are packed with a lot of answers and FAQs. Everything is there.
Now Amazon even has its own AI assistant. And they can do so much with it because they have all kinds of data: on-page content, product databases, and user behavior. So yes, when you think about Amazon, you have to consider the power of their data.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And interestingly, they don’t even use structure data in the traditional SEO sense.
That’s one of those surprising facts—people are often shocked by it. But they don’t need structured data because they structure their content semantically, directly in the layout of the page.
Their product pages—and even their category pages—are built in a way that structured data is not needed. The search engines fully understand the way content is organized: here’s the price, here’s the price variation, here’s the review, the reviewer’s name, and so on.
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah, when you have a website like Amazon—a strong brand—Google develops tailored algorithms to handle that kind of content. I remember a patent from 2004 about forums. Google created a system to evaluate the quality of each individual topic within a forum. Then, it would calculate the overall quality of the forum based on the average quality of its topics. So, Google created a specific algorithm for forums, blogs, and so on.
And when it comes to big sites like Amazon, Google has even developed specialized crawlers—like spiders—to properly crawl and understand platforms that have huge volumes of data. Nowadays, it’s crucial to think about platforms like Wikipedia in that context too.
YouTube, Creators, and the Future of Publishers
Gianluca Fiorelli: Oh, totally, totally. And as I mentioned in my introduction, you’re really active on YouTube. I think you're even in the program of YouTube, right?
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah, I’m a YouTube product expert. I started using YouTube back in May 2006.
Gianluca Fiorelli: So just one year after it launched, basically.
Giorgio Taverniti: Yes, a few months later.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, I think YouTube should be paying you for being such a long-time creator!
One thing I’ve been reflecting on is how, almost two years ago now, the Helpful Content Update really hit independent publishers hard—and many still haven’t recovered. And now, with AI Overviews, a lot of potential traffic is being siphoned away from independent content creators—especially those working in text-based formats like blogs or small online publications.
I know there’s no silver bullet to fix this, especially when it comes to getting them back on solid financial footing. But I’ve been thinking... maybe it’s too late now, maybe it should’ve happened earlier, but perhaps the only real path forward for these publishers is to study the YouTube or even TikTok creators. These are people who manage to build communities around their content—and then monetize through that community, rather than relying solely on random visitors coming in via Google Discover.
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah, absolutely. Publishers are in trouble right now because their economic model doesn’t fit the internet as it exists today. The traditional editorial model—every website built around that style—has a problem.
In Italy, we have a good example of this: il Post. It’s a very solid publication, and over 50% of its income comes from subscriptions. That’s a more sustainable model. But if you rely on things like page views and impressions to make money, I think you end up losing the trust of your audience. You’re forced to chase clicks, to create content designed to generate a high volume of views, which often leads to clickbait.
To me, this is very clear. il Post gets its revenue from subscribers. When you look at creators, you see how they create content. And I believe that, in the future, it’s crucial for companies to have creators inside their organizations, journals, and so on. This is a complete mindset shift, especially when creating content for platforms like YouTube or TikTok.
In Italy, we’ve seen a few good examples—like Fanpage—building strong followings on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. They’re doing real informational work on Instagram, for instance. The younger generation doesn’t read newspapers anymore—they go on Instagram and watch videos. So, publishers need to understand and adapt to this behavior.
If they don’t develop a content strategy that incorporates creators, they risk losing their communities entirely. On platforms like YouTube and TikTok, it's the community that holds the real power—not the journalistic brand.
So I really think we can learn a lot from content creators and apply that knowledge to develop a strategy that fits our own goals.
Right now, newspapers are in trouble. But interestingly, I’ve noticed that major publications in Italy don’t seem to be struggling as much with AI Overviews. That’s because most of their traffic—around 70%—comes from Google Discover. They might not even realize it, but that’s where the majority of their traffic is coming from.
And Google Discover is an audience-based environment. If you have a strong brand and you’re publishing news content—and especially if you’re also creating video—you’re essentially doubling your audience. That’s the mindset publishers need to adopt: build for both YouTube and Google Discover audiences.
I’ve experienced this personally. I’ll read an article on one of the big Italian news sites, and later when I open Google Discover, I’ll see that same article recommended to me. Google knows I read content from that site and considers me part of its audience. So when I move to another Google property, Google knows and it continues to show me related content.
That’s why a strong strategy is to create a strategy of content creation to address the inspirational intent. And if you also have a website and you try to mix these two, you double your audience. You end up with a larger audience on Google Discover, and a larger audience on YouTube—and if you really want to push things further, you can also launch a podcast or a vertical newsletter.
So, newspapers need to start thinking about good content creation. That’s how you build a community, and how you give more power and longevity to the content you already have.
To me, that’s a really meaningful shift for newspapers and journals.
Hyper-Personalization & Memory in AI Search
Gianluca Fiorelli: And that makes me think about another evolution we know is coming—this hyper-personalization of search.
It’s not like search isn’t personalized already, but it’s going to become even more so. And if we’re able to engage people, to build a strong returning community of readers, viewers, or customers—even if it takes time—then our content has a better chance of being shown in future searches that can be satisfied by our content, tailored to that audience.
And this could be a way to really improve the effectiveness of all the content we’re going to create and expand on.
It’s like—we could say that 25 years ago, or at least 20, we entered the era of SEO. We started creating content to rank, focusing more on targeting keywords than actually thinking about the user.
I’m not saying everyone did that, but a big part of the internet—especially those building websites—focused more on targeting Google more than their actual audience. And that wasn't always the case. Before Google became dominant, people targeted their personas, their real audience. The goal was to connect with them, to stand out from competitors, and to create something engaging.
And now, in a way, we’re circling back to that.
Giorgio Taverniti: Exactly. That’s why I say you have to start by thinking about your audience first. You need to build a good website or app and foster a space where people actually engage with it—a community.
And once people begin interacting with your site, the browser knows it—Chrome knows, your Android phone knows. For Google, people who interact with your website represent a new audience. So if you visit that site and later move to another Google property, the system connects the dots and continues to show you related content.
How Sessions Become Continuous Interactions
Giorgio Taverniti: When you mentioned hyper-personalization, I want to take it a step further and bring in something I know you're a big fan of—search sessions. Me too, I’m a huge fan of this concept. But there’s another evolution happening now: continuous interaction.
With AI search, it’s no longer just about a session that starts and ends. Traditionally, a search session might look like this: today, I search for a vacation in Thailand; next week, I look up hotels in Thailand; then maybe a month later, I book a flight. That’s a linear search session—it starts and eventually ends.
But with AI, everything changes. We’re beginning to treat Google—or ChatGPT—as real assistants. It becomes a continuous interaction with an environment that evolves based on what we search and what we prompt.
That’s why I mentioned earlier that, in the near future, people will develop a strong culture around prompting—how to write effective prompts. We’re already starting to realize we can use longer, more complex queries, and that’s changing the way we think entirely.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I think the concept that’s really underlying this shift in how we think about sessions is the concept of memory.
It’s easier to explain using ChatGPT as an example. In ChatGPT, we can create projects—and in a way, each project functions like a search session. We start with a goal or topic, and that becomes the “session.” Or, if we have a good memory and we don’t create a project, we start a conversation and then we are able to review and refine that conversation—even one from a long time ago—just by scrolling back through our chat history. That’s not something you can do with Google… at least not yet. It's possible with Gemini, though.
Let’s say you create a project about planning a vacation to Thailand. You might start it, then forget about it for a while—but ChatGPT doesn’t. When you return, that context is still there, ready to pick up where you left off.
Another interesting thing is that you can give it instructions that act almost like advanced search operators. You can say something like, “Please ChatGPT, next time we talk, remember that I want to explore these ideas…” because maybe at that moment, you don’t have time to keep the conversation going.
GPT will respond, “Okay, memory saved,” and then you can even go check what memories have been stored. So, yes, this is where I believe hyper-personalization is based on memory.
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah, absolutely. I can’t even count how many times I’ve gone back into ChatGPT or Gemini, opened an old chat, and picked up right where I left off.
Just yesterday, I opened an old conversation I had with Gemini—probably from two months ago.
To me, it’s very clear how significant this continuous interaction is. Sometimes, I even observe myself as if I were an external entity—I study my own behavior. For example, yesterday I turned on my camera and talked with Gemini to help me fix an issue I had with my microphone. Then this morning, I reopened that same chat, again with the camera on, not just using text. So it really is a continuous interaction we’re having with these tools.
With AI assistants, we’re basically always in an ongoing conversation. Right now, we go back to specific chats to reestablish context, or we create projects in ChatGPT. But I think in the future, you’ll be able to start a chat—or even a Google search—without needing to go back to any previous conversation.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Exactly. It’ll have memory and be able to recall it when needed.
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah.
The Foundational Importance of Continous Learning (and Teaching) in SEO
Gianluca Fiorelli: Now, let’s shift to something that’s really close to your heart. As I mentioned earlier, you created the GT Forum, and all these events around Italy. There's also the spin-off, We Make Future, which is somewhat connected to you—though it’s more the creation of your business partner, Cosmano Lombardo. It's an event that’s even expanding beyond Italy now.
How important is it, in your view, to continuously educate people in SEO the right way? We’re constantly educating ourselves and others. How critical is that educational factor in our industry?
Giorgio Taverniti: It's absolutely crucial. When we started many years ago, we were doing free tours—people didn’t even have to buy a ticket. We traveled around Italy to talk to people about why Google, marketing, and SEO were important. I think that was around 2004 or 2005 when we began.
Back then, there wasn’t much awareness about SEO in Italy. And year after year, I’ve seen how education in this field has only become more important. Just look at LinkedIn right now—you’ll see so much confusion around that.
So, why is continuous education important in this sector? Because companies and brands right now may appear stable, but they’re also frozen in place. And that’s due to the fact that one day they read one thing on LinkedIn, and the next day they read something completely different.
Gianluca Fiorelli: So you're saying companies are paralyzed?
Giorgio Taverniti: Exactly—paralyzed. They’re not investing because they don’t know how to invest or where to invest. And that’s largely because the messaging they see—especially on platforms like LinkedIn—is so confusing.
If you open LinkedIn and try to read something about AI, everyone’s saying something different. You start with one post, then read another, and it completely contradicts the first. It’s incredible. That’s why education in this sector is so important.
My dream is to create something like a school—one where we can teach people at a higher level. Because the reality is that there are only a few of us truly doing SEO in Italy. Maybe there are 10,000 people involved overall, but probably only 300 or 400 doing it at a high level.
I imagine something like what Moz used to have—a space for advanced professionals, not necessarily to be taught, but to come together, brainstorm, and figure out how we communicate these things better. One of the biggest sources of confusion in this field is that we use the same words but mean completely different things. That happens in many sectors, of course—but in SEO, I think the confusion is particularly intense.
So yes, continuous education is essential. Companies right now are completely paralyzed. AI has created a lot of uncertainty. People don’t know how to invest or where to invest.
If I think about what I want to do in the future—say, even when I’m 100 years old—I still want to educate. I still want to research, to study, and to share what I learn with the community. That’s how I see myself going forward.
Gianluca Fiorelli: That’s a great way to see yourself—and I’ll be there to see you at 100, okay?
Giorgio Taverniti: I don’t know if I’ll still be around!
Gianluca Fiorelli: Well, that would be fantastic—because it’s not just AI that’s evolving, health and medicine are too!
Giorgio Taverniti: Oh yeah.
The Fireside Questionnaire
Gianluca Fiorelli: So, let’s wrap up this great conversation—it’s been almost an hour—with a couple of personal questions. You were born in Monasterace, right?
Let’s imagine you’re not in the SEO field. You’re working in the travel industry, and your job is to promote Monasterace to an international audience watching us right now. What would you do? How would you promote your hometown?
Giorgio Taverniti: Perfect. So, here’s how I would promote my town.
Imagine a beach in Thailand—one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Now picture that beach with a lot of people. In Monasterace, you have the same beach but without people.
To me, that’s the perfect image for promoting my hometown. In Monasterace—and in the nearby towns, all part of the Calabria region along what we call the Costa Ionica—you’ll find stunning, quiet beaches, even in the summer. There are lots of little towns, and it’s never overcrowded. It’s a great place if you want to chill, rent a car, and explore different beaches. No one bothers you. You’re totally free.
So I’d say Monasterace offers a free vacation—not just in spirit, but also economically. It’s very affordable. I have a cousin who lives in Toronto. If you’re there, you can find him at Frank’s Pizza House—his name is Giorgio Taverniti, too, like me, just older!
When he came to Monasterace, he said to me: “If you advertised this place in the U.S.A., in North America, you’d fill it with North Americans!” It’s cheap, the people are happy and friendly, and you feel totally free to do whatever you want. You don’t even need to make reservations—everything is open,and the beaches are free.
That’s my town.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Speaking of countries—you lived in Thailand for a while, if I remember correctly. And you always spoke so fondly about how beautiful life was there.
Thailand is also a popular destination for SEOs living the digital nomad lifestyle. So what do you remember most about Thailand—with that special sense of affection and pleasure?
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah, absolutely. For me, Thailand feels like a family.
I first went there in 2004, and after 10 years, we started to talk about digital nomads and something like that. Then, for the next 10 or 15 years, I kept going back. If I add it all up, I think I spent around four years of my life there.
What I carry most in my heart is the people. The people are truly incredible: open-minded, and incredibly friendly. That’s what I miss the most. Not the places, the beaches, or the weather. I miss people, they are very good people.
About four or five years before COVID-19, I went back for the last time. I landed—not in Bangkok, but in Krabi, where I used to spend a lot of time—and I cried. I felt like I was home. And there are only a few places in my life that have made me feel that way. Thailand is one of them.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And one last question—what does Giorgio Taverniti do when he’s not thinking about search, SEO, Google, or AI?
Giorgio Taverniti: Theater.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Theater?
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah. I don’t know how to say it in English—maybe “pedagogist”?
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, yes!
Giorgio Taverniti: Like a trainer for actors. I’ve been studying theater for about 10 years now. And today, I work as a trainer in the educational field.
Theater—real, meaningful theater—is like a ritual. When it’s done well, it gives you a sense of home. It’s incredible. If you’re trying to be someone you’re not, theater will expose that. It shows you the truth. So when I’m not doing SEO, I do theater.
Now I’m studying how to train actors, and I truly love it. Because in theater, you can really see people. You can feel them. You witness something real. When you live in the city, most conversations—most friendships even—can feel superficial. And yes, “superficial” is the right word.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, it is.
Giorgio Taverniti: So when you have relationships outside of work, in the street, wherever—it’s often surface-level. But in the theater, when you begin training, you go deep. Really deep. And through that, you build deeper relationships. You see people for who they are.
In today’s world—after COVID, with social media, with AI—human relationships have become more distant. We’re disconnected in many ways. Theater helps me reconnect. It helps me understand what people really are. It allows me to “touch” people—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I totally understand what you’re saying. I actually did theater too, many years ago—back when I was at university, and for a few years afterward. One thing that really stuck with me is this: if you want to be a good actor—even though you’re acting as someone else—you still have to transmit truth through your performance. And to do that, you must be truthful with yourself first.
That’s essentially what you’re saying, right?
Giorgio Taverniti: Yeah, exactly. Thank you for explaining it even better than I did.
Gianluca Fiorelli: No, no—it just came to mind. Your words inspired it.
And Giorgio, thank you. Thank you so much for spending this hour with me and with our audience. As a reminder to everyone, The Search Session can be watched on YouTube and on our blog, and you can also listen on Spotify.
Thank you again—and I hope we’ll have you back for another episode in the future.
Giorgio Taverniti: Thank you, Gianluca. It was truly an honor.
Gianluca Fiorelli: The pleasure was mine. And thank you to all of you for being here with me and Giorgio. And now, here comes the classic YouTuber sign-off—which I don’t particularly love, but hey, we have to do it!
Remember to ring the bell, give a like to the video, and subscribe—so you’ll get notified when a new episode drops.
Thanks again—and bye-bye!
Podcast Host
Gianluca Fiorelli
With almost 20 years of experience in web marketing, Gianluca Fiorelli is a Strategic and International SEO Consultant who helps businesses improve their visibility and performance on organic search. Gianluca collaborated with clients from various industries and regions, such as Glassdoor, Idealista, Rastreator.com, Outsystems, Chess.com, SIXT Ride, Vegetables by Bayer, Visit California, Gamepix, James Edition and many others.
A very active member of the SEO community, Gianluca daily shares his insights and best practices on SEO, content, Search marketing strategy and the evolution of Search on social media channels such as X, Bluesky and LinkedIn and through the blog on his website: IloveSEO.net.
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